Online Sales and Webstores for Comic Publishers from Broken Frontier

One of our favourite reviewers, Andy Oliver over at Broken Frontiers did a wonderful piece about the role of online sales for self-publishers and the viability of a webstore. A really wonderful article talking to people all across the industry. Go check out the whole thing on the site.

This is the bit from the Soaring Penguin Press publisher, John Anderson.

“For smaller publishers the corporate shadow is always a consideration. John Anderson of Soaring Penguin Press feels that an online store has to offer something extra to compensate. “Yes. Absolutely. But the online store is something I have to work much harder on. In order for the store to work, people have to know it’s there. That means Twitter, Facebook, a growing mailing list. And something else. For those of us who sell books, a better reason to buy from my site than from Amazon.

“Amazon are always going to beat me on price if only because their delivery costs are much, much lower. So what I need to do is get people to like what we’re doing enough to want to support us. And also, to make our site more than just a place to buy books… to make the site more of a social gathering than just a place to buy books.

“Looking specifically at (Soaring Penguin anthology) Meanwhile…, what I can do off my site is offer a subscription rate which is something you can’t get anywhere else. I have to wonder if maybe that’s the other thing I should be offering: incentives. Signed bookplates. Invitations to book launches. Things that you can’t get just buying the book elsewhere.””